My new project BAC Eagle, 617 Sqn.

[ChernayaAkula]

Neat project!  Love that painting!

[kitnut617]

Well this is what I have in mind for my project.  I've read or heard on a documentary (or on the VHS tape I've got) that as the TSR-2 was developed, so would all the avionics and that the nose radar would've got bigger along with a bigger nose profile.  Joe could probably elaborate on that for us but my thinking is that the radar would have been somewhere abouts the size what the Tornado has.  I know the TSR-2 has side looking radar but if it was supposed to penetrate at very low level and flying fast, the forward looking radar would have to be very good too.

So with that in mind I did some measuring, and found that the Tornado fuselage is only fractionally wider than the TSR-2's fuselage is at the front of the wheelbay to the intakes, about a razor saw blade cut on either side of the cockpit.  Cutting along some of the natural lines of the TSR-2 I cut the cockpit off but kept the underside of the fuselage, this will be carefully sanded down until I can get a slight downward slant of the new cockpit, which BTW is in the exact same location as the original cockpit was, the nose cone though making the overall length about one scale foot longer (might be a bit more),  The difference is that the pilot is now about 18 scale inches higher where as the GIB is roughly at the same height.  These photos below don't show how the new forward fuselage will be blended in to the original fuselage but you can get the idea where I'm going with this.

First two photos show how much I cut into the Tornado fusealge to slim it down a touch, the other two are how the end result will look (sort-of, if I'm lucky  ).

[PR19_Kit]

Robert,

As soon as I saw your piccies I had visions of teams of guys at Warton with HUGE saws cutting down the sides of full size Tonkas! 

This Whiffing can get to you............ 

The new nose fits very nicely with the rest of it though.

[daniel_g]

Hi,

question about the radome - given the aerodynamics of the plane, it would had to land at a decent angle of attack - I estimate between 5 and 10 degrees from videos.  Do you think a bigger radome like this one would have required a Concorde/Fairey Delat II droop for the pilot to land it?

Daniel

[kitnut617]

I had consider that when I started the project and I don't see any problem.  Comparing the original cockpit and what the pilot could see from that to this one, it's about the same.

I've done a bit more filing down of the under fuselage bit to make it more tapered and now the new cockpit has a more downward slant to it which does improve the view over the nose even more, the top profile of the fuselage is now almost straight across all the way to the rear of the canopy.  If you notice, the horizontal split of the two Tornado fuselage halves, it is now in line with the slightly downward slanting cut line I did on the TSR-2 fuselage, which follows a panel line on the kit and I'm asuming there's a similar one on the real thing, I'll have to have a look at some photos I have of the one at Duxford to see if it's really there.   But by the time I've sanded off the square corners at the bottom of the Tornado fuselage it will look much better.

[kitnut617]

Hi,

question about the radome - given the aerodynamics of the plane, it would had to land at a decent angle of attack - I estimate between 5 and 10 degrees from videos.  Do you think a bigger radome like this one would have required a Concorde/Fairey Delat II droop for the pilot to land it?

Daniel

Your comments about the droop snoot reminded me of something, the proposed RAF version of the Concorde wasn't going to get the droop snoot, nor the moving visor.  See the sketch here of what appeared in an RAF Year Book (1968 I think) You'll see it has a different nose altogether and also what I've done with my Concorde B.1 :

[PR19_Kit]

I've sat in the cockpit of a Tornado GR1 and a TSR2 (bighead yes, I know....... ) and from neither of them can you see anything forward of the base of the windscreen. Indeed, you can't see ANY of the airframe of the TSR2 from the pilot's position, unless you count the cockpit interior.

The Tonka F3 may be different with its longer nose, and a lot will depend on the approach angle of course. Having watched many Tonkas on finals from the threshold caravan at Lossie they seem to fly quite flat, just a few degrees nose up, but then they do have socking great flaps, plus the VG wing of course.

[kitnut617]

I've sat in the cockpit of a Tornado GR1 and a TSR2 (bighead yes, I know....... ) and from neither of them can you see anything forward of the base of the windscreen. Indeed, you can't see ANY of the airframe of the TSR2 from the pilot's position, unless you count the cockpit interior.

That's really interesting because I was thinking just that, what with the bulkhead between the two cockpits in the TSR-2 there couldn't have been much of a view. 

Just to clarify a couple of things, I've only used the Tonka forward fuselage because 1. it has a larger radome, 2. it has a boxy fuselage which just happens to be close in width, 3. it has a continuous canopy & 4. there's a couple of other features to the Tonka fuselage which work into my project.

As I've already mentioned, there's a horizontal split for the two halves of the Tornado kit which on a Tornado is parallel to the line of flight, on my conversion this is slanted down quite a bit so the 'view' over the nose is greatly improved.  A feature I've alluded to above is that there's a 'ledge' under the canopy which on the Tonka leads onto the wing (and probably is something to do with the wing) but on this project it acts as streamlining past the spline behind the canopy to the rear fuselage . 

Some of you will probably have notice already that there's a great big difference between the spline shape and the fuselage shape and this was one of the things I was trying to work out how to overcome before I started cutting plastic (and posting photos here) and the answer was staring right at me everytime I opened the What-If forum home page.  Andy's (General Melchard) P.1154 RN also has a 'ledge' under the canopy and this leads to two small air intakes each side of the rear spline, my plan is to do something along these lines to blend the small spline shape into the larger fuselage shape while using the 'ledge' as the airflow guide to some small intakes.

[lenny100]

i did a simler conersion a few years ago the the 1/72 sclae first came out here it is to show you it looks fine

[kitnut617]

i did a simler conersion a few years ago the the 1/72 sclae first came out here it is to show you it looks fine

It certainly does Lenny  , what did you use for tanks, they look like what are under the wings of a B-47 ?

[lenny100]

no they were from a dicast f15e that i was bought many years ago

[kitnut617]

Neat, so what did you call yours ?

[lenny100]

her is The back story of the BAC GR-10ECR Talon which if i remember came third in the group build two years ago

In July 1987 the US Airforce announced a competition to replace its F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft.
BAC submitted its tsr2-90 aircraft. With its updated airframe, engines which were upgrades for the Concorde engines giving super-cruse performance and longer range than the gr 4 eagles and a advanced electronics systems developed for the failed MRCA replacement for the gr4 eagles.
Although this aircraft lost out to the F 16 the RAF found the aircraft to good to let go.
42 older gr3 aircraft were taken from storage and sent to BAC factory at Woodford for the upgrade. Although the budget for each aircraft nearly doubled during the following two years, when the first aircraft was received by 74 squadron in 1991 replacing its f4 phantoms the RAF had the worlds finest SEAD aircraft, with the USAF placing a order for twenty six new build aircraft after the first gulf war when it found its own aircraft were found lacking. This also led to sales from Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia.
The EW suite is based on the US system fitted in the prowler aircraft, but when the ALARM system is married to this then radar systems says goodnight until the "Talon as the pilots know it" goes home...

Armament

1 X fully automatic, Mauser 27mm cannon
1 X AIM-9 Sidewinder or ASRAAM
4 X Air Launched Anti-Radiation Missile (ALARM)
1 X Storm Shadow
2 X Paveway II LGB

The aircraft is shown in tiger meet markings


Uses Airfix tsr2 and tornado parts  for the fuselage  and several parts from amt d7 class battle cruiser  and a old set of engines and large drop tanks from my parts box cant remember which kit their from,

Details are from the Airfix red arrows hawk and the original tsr2 sheet

[kitnut617]

I've slowly been doing a bit of the build, air intakes and such, there was a bit of a problem with the fit of the bits that make up the intake assembly but it's all straightened out now.  Then my mind was zooming ahead with what this thing will carry, the underwing load I've already shown for sure (found my Revell Tornado which has some very nice pods which I will probably use on this) but I got to thinking what will the offensive load be, well --- as this is a 617 Sqn. example and 617 is famous for it's precision bombing attacks, it had to be something special ( does that give a clue --'special'),

The time period for this is about 10-15 years ago where 'bunker busting' was the catch phrase and 'Mother-of-all---- was another, well I decided that this would have the 'mother-of-all-bunker-busters'.

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Looking really good..... keep it coming 

Ian